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Zimbabwean exiles pray at a Methodist church in Johannesburg, where
more than 1000 take shelter every night.Photo: AFP

Mugabe unlikely to pay for his crimes

April 4, 2008

ROBERT MUGABE never showed any compunction about using violence
against his opponents. When he faced general strikes in Zimbabwe a
decade ago, it was entirely natural for him to appear on state
television and warn: "I have many degrees in violence."

In the 1970s his rebel army murdered thousands of civilians,
singling out black villagers as often as white farmers. Dozens of
his commanders were jailed and tortured, suspected of
disloyalty.

Yet his greatest crimes came after he won power in 1980. The
massacres in the Matabeleland region of south-west Zimbabwe between
1982 and 1987 form an indelible scar on his rule.

The violence began when he tried to secure his grip on power by
crushing his black opponents. Joshua Nkomo, leader of the ZAPU
party, was the key rival. Using the presence of armed dissidents as
an excuse, Mr Mugabe deployed a new military unit, the Fifth
Brigade, to ZAPU's stronghold in Matabeleland. This arid area is
the home of Zimbabwe's minority Ndebele people. Here, the Fifth
Brigade unleashed a brutal campaign of terror, burying victims in
mass graves or flinging their bodies down mine shafts.

Investigators later compiled a meticulous report, Breaking
The Silence, that recorded atrocities of mind-numbing
horror.

One pregnant woman said: "They hit me in the stomach with the
butt of the gun. The unborn child broke in pieces in my stomach. It
was God's desire that I did not die too. The child was born
afterwards, piece by piece."

Mr Mugabe's culpability is clear. In order to be guilty of
crimes against humanity, international law specifies that an
individual must hold "command responsibility" for the forces
carrying out atrocities. The Fifth Brigade was outside the army's
command structure and its soldiers answered directly to him.

An official inquiry appointed by the government in 1983 heard
descriptions of mass shootings, beatings and the burning to death
of people in huts. When it handed its report to Mr Mugabe, he
immediately suppressed it.

The death toll in the Matabeleland massacres has never been
established. Breaking The Silence records 3750 murders but
states that the true figure was probably twice that. Tens of
thousands more suffered torture, abduction, rape or assault.

Nothing in Mr Mugabe's later rule compared with the brutality of
his actions in Matabeleland, but in their callous, random
brutality, the township demolitions of winter 2005 come close.

Mr Mugabe decided to "clean up Zimbabwe's cities". Bulldozers
were sent into the poorest townships of Harare, Bulawayo and every
other urban centre and ordered to destroy "illegal structures".
They flattened a random selection of houses, shacks, factories,
shops, garages and businesses.

A United Nations investigation found that 700,000 people lost
their homes or livelihoods during this "disastrous" campaign.

Coming in the midst of an economic crisis, the township
demolitions showed Mr Mugabe's utter contempt for Zimbabwe's urban
poor. Most of them supported the opposition Movement for Democratic
Change. By wrecking their homes and livelihoods, he took his
pitiless revenge.

But there is virtually no chance of Mr Mugabe facing justice.
Any new government is likely to promise him a quiet retirement as
part of deal for a peaceful transition of power. In any case, there
is simply no court in which he could be tried.

Only the International Criminal Court could conceivably hear a
case, but it has no jurisdiction over crimes committed before its
foundation in July 2002.

While the Matabeleland massacres would be firmly outside its
remit, the township demolitions would not. But nobody has yet
suggested these amounted to crimes against humanity. After all, no
one was killed by the bulldozers.

So Mr Mugabe will almost certainly die without having spent any
time in the dock.

Telegraph, London

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Zimbabwean exiles pray at a Methodist church in Johannesburg, where
more than 1000 take shelter every night.